A look at the A’s new spring training facility in Mesa

The city of Mesa is shelling out just shy of $20 million to renovate HoHoKam Stadium and Fitch Park, the former big-league and minor-league spring homes for the Cubs, for the A’s use beginning next season – and all vestiges of the Cubs are gone after they’d spent 17 seasons there:

The exterior of HoHokam Stadium. Susan Slusser/The Chronicle

The seating is being reduced slightly, from 13,000 to 10,500, but the new seats will be much better, and there will be expanded shaded dining areas. In addition, the concourse – very dark now – will be lightened up, and the A’s are getting a state-of-the-art new clubhouse at HoHoKam that will be substantially larger than the clubhouse at Phoenix Muni. All the bells and whistles will be in pace, and the thing everyone associated with the project is most excited about: There will be a new video scoreboard that is more than double the size of the little scoreboard here at Muni – HoHoKam will have an HD videoboard that measures 26 by 56 feet.

There’s not much to see in the interior of HoHoKam right now, though; it will be finished in nine months. “Our new baby,” A’s director of minor-league operations Ted Polakowski joked. Here’s architect Jason Boyer, whose Gensler firm provided all design work for the renovation:

There is more fun stuff three blocks away at Fitch Park, where the A’s will work out the first two weeks of the spring and where the team’s minor-league players will be based during the spring, Arizona League play, instructional leagues and the Arizona Fall League. The facility will be 55,000 square feet when completed, nearly double Papago Park, with four full fields and an agility field, a medicine-ball wall and – this is the coolest – hydrotherapy pools, hot and cold and one with a treadmill. That is going in right now:

Construction at Fitch Park includes the installation of hydrotherapy pools. Susan Slusser/The Chronicle

All jokes about the A’s having a far nicer spring training facility than regular-season digs go below in the comments section. I’ll judge the best of them later.

There is no real daily news yet today – the A’s play their one night game of the spring this evening, and they’re having their spring union meeting right now. It’s A.J. Griffin on the mound against Arizona, and the lineup is: Crisp CF, Donaldson 3B, Lowrie SS, Cespedes LF, Moss 1B, Reddick RF, Callaspo DH, Vogt C, Punto 2B.